Hazardous Enterprise
by Jonn Wood
Summary: Jade gets a new toy. Based on the BG&E 2 Leak video.


**1. See the BG&E 2 "Leak" video at YouTube hash #**

**y6R6EN-soJ0**

**for context. The following is written as if it was part of a book, and several elements have been introduced and explained already.**

**2. Why? Let's just say I think I may need the practice soon.**

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><p>Clearly, they wanted their sword back.<p>

Jade spent an instant comparing the three story-drop to the alternative, and flung herself into the sky.

She got her feet under her, and hit the ground next to a rather surprised cow, and rolled as bullets began to fly past her.

She had liked it better when the bad guys just had hammers.

The fall should've broken a leg, if not a neck, even with the roll. She didn't have much experience jumping off three-story buildings, but it hadn't hurt like it should've, the impact had been weaker. Had the sword done something? Had it been _her_? She didn't know much about her new powers, and Pey'j's said his contacts had been vague about what benefit it would have.

There was the faint buzz of a tilt-rotor somewhere nearby, and there was no way they could get that kind of air-power up so quickly. No way. In fact, there had been way too many cops around for them to have just arrived-

It had been another trap, and the snare was tightening.

She turned her momentum from the roll into the start of a run.

Double H had once told her the best way out of any military ambush was usually straight through. He also said the best way to escape a police chase was to punch through the line before they had a chance to consolidate. Obviously, she had somehow caught them out of position, or they'd have taken her down by now.

The sword was an unfamiliar weight on her harness, throwing off her stride, and the thing might slow her down, catching on the stacks of empty blue and gold crates that were toppling under the gunfire, pelting her with bits of plastic and wood that opened little cuts-

Minor injuries. She'd had worse. No time to stop and put on a band-aid.

Some of the falling crates blocked an alleyway next to a staircase, and Jade somehow found the breath to swear. She could've used either for her escape, but she doubted the Guards were going to stop and let her clear it up. She kept going.

A shop flashed by on her left, a man just getting up at the commotion, and then Jade decided a change of course was in order. She grabbed the frame of a doorway coming up on her left, used her momentum to swing her through it. There were more crates, these with fish in them, and a wall with a doorway and a faded mural of a curved shape. (Lips, maybe? Didn't matter.) Two more Guards appeared in the doorway in front of her. Their bullets missed her by inches, and as Jade swung left, she heard the sounds of something hitting meat, and a cry of pain.

Her throat tightened.

The alcove contained a green door, and she shouldered it open with strength born of desperation and fear. The man sitting on the toilet looked up in surprise as a young woman with green eyes planted her right foot on the small table next to him. He ducked as she jumped for the pipe overhead and eeled her way out the bathroom's broken window, her baggy green pants somehow not catching on the frame and shards of glass, and-was that a sword on her back?

Jade landed in an alley. It was shaped like an L, with exits to her left and at 12 o'clock. Three cops straight ahead were just leveling their guns at her, and the left path was blocked by a few crates.

So she went forward.

The first cop was kneeling, and was surprised at 60 kilos of green-eyed reporter suddenly landing on his shoulder. Before he could recover, Jade bounded to his standing partner, and leapt for the third cop, near the entrance to the alley. She wasn't going to make it to him, and there was no way she could take him down in hand-to-hand before his partners turned around-

Suddenly the sword was in her hand, slashing across the man's chest. It threw him to the floor, and Jade stared at the prone man as she shoved the weapon onto its clasp on her back, glanced behind her to make sure the other two weren't up yet, and almost ran into a sleepy cow. She smiled and crossed the street between two tuk-tuks going in opposite directions, one of which honked at her rudeness. It was still mid-morning, so there weren't many people on the street. Which meant there weren't many people to get hurt.

She hadn't decided to draw the sword, had she? She was just holding it, the jadeite providing a grip that was better than she expected as it cut through the cop's body armour, the shock as it hit bone jarring up her arm-and it had happened so _fast_. She couldn't use the sword until someone could figure out what was going on-

Height. She needed height.

There was a wooden column ahead of her, and she sprang for it, her sneakers scrabbling on the age-smoothed wood. The column was overhung, and she climbed onto the small ledge above, leapt for the enclosed balcony across the mouth of the alley, and then back to another ledge a floor above the first.

Her knee slammed into the side of it, nearly knocking her off. Jade managed to get a grip on the side, but her arms were getting tired, and she gratefully scrambled over the open balcony. The doorway ahead led to a kitchen. Jade raced through the room, nearly running into the table, muttered an apology to the woman in the burnt-orange robe clutching her frightened child behind her, and went up the stairs to her left. Nearly ran into two walls on the way up, and there was a baby crying somewhere below her as she turned right, then raced onto the nearby balcony. Just past the next rooftop, with the mid-morning sunlight gleaming off its orange paint job, was the _Vikrant_. It wasn't the prettiest tiltie in the system, but right now, it looked like Nirvana to Jade.

She leapt for the next roof, a few meters below her, and bullets zipped by right in front of her. She landed, rolled, felt a jolt of pain in her left arm. Whatever had been protecting her from fall damage wasn't working anymore.

Jade cradled the arm against her body as she ran for the roof's edge, and jumped into thin air for the second time in what felt like hours. The rotor flashed by not a half-meter to her right, and lightning jagged up her injured limb as she slammed into the ship.

This was not turning out to be one of her better days.

She gritted her teeth and got a better grip on the side of the cockpit.

Jamaal, on the upper deck, had turned as he heard her hit the side. The ship started to turn from the momentum of her impact, and he yelled down at the reporter. "Jade, what-"

"Hang on!" she yelled as she climbed into the pilot's seat. Out of the corner of her eye, she heard the Guard's tilties coming towards her. They weren't armed themselves, but she didn't have to see it to know that there would be men with guns hanging out the sides, their eyes dead and soulless. Their airships could outrun any standard civilian aircraft.

Good thing the _Vikrant_ wasn't a standard civilian aircraft.

Jade adjusted the rotors for forward motion, and started to ease the throttle up. "Vikki" was going to need every meter she could get between her and the Guard, and Jade wanted to make as much out of their lead as possible. A few more buzzes joined the tilt-rotor that had nearly shot her a few seconds ago.

Screw caution.

She shoved the throttle to the stop, and the orange aircraft tore off into the sun-laced sky.

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><p><strong>1. Constructive criticism requested.<strong>

**2. I'm not sure if it's a staff or a sword, but it's likely the latter. You don't generally curve staffs, she swings at the cop's body, which is a sword blow, instead of hitting him in the head, which would be more of a staff move, and the tip seems to be pointed. Also, if you look closely, it's made of Jade. Geddit?**

**3. If you watch the video closely, you'll notice the architecture is logical. For example, the stairway Jade races past that gets blocked by the falling crates has an alley next to it. The L-shaped alley she finds herself in when she leaves the bedroom window is that exact same alley. The doorway with the man inside she races past has a back door, which is she passes when she ducks into the building and runs past the mural. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that it's gameplay or a "target render", she probably could've gone through there as well.**


End file.
